


On This Sinking Night

by Luz



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Dead Mule, Horror, M/M, Reanimation, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, domestic ziam, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2370470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luz/pseuds/Luz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam and Zayn are beaus in the tiny town of Calico Ridge, Arkansas. Aside from riding around in pickup trucks and taking dips in swimming holes, they’re also the county’s unofficial experts on the supernatural. (Or, my desire to put Ziam in a Southern Gothic story spirals out of control.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	On This Sinking Night

“Jesus _Christ_ , you can be difficult,” Liam grouses, unbuckling his seatbelt and pulling out his lighter anyway. Zayn just pouts. It isn’t his fault that he needs a cigarette and Liam is cranky. He holds the already half-smoked stick to Liam, who flicks the lighter impatiently.

“Can tell you’re worried,” Zayn says airily, taking a drag. The end is still a little damp from where he’d had the first half an hour ago. The general store is out, and won’t have more cartons in until Monday, so he’s got to ration what he has.

Liam doesn’t respond, just slams the pickup door shut, leaving Zayn alone in the cab. He smokes idly, putting the butt out on the worn metal frame of the pickup’s wing mirror and flicking it onto the gravel driveway. He watches the door impatiently, waiting for Liam. He’d have gone into the clinic with him, but he doesn’t care for the jars of viscera that the doctor keeps around as if to prove his expertise. _You killed something and pickled it_ , Zayn thinks sardonically. _Congratulations_.

He hears the wooden storm door smack against its frame, and Liam is trotting down the chipped white steps toward the truck. Zayn can see he’s tense.

“What’d Doc say?” he asks, trying to make his tone warm but nonchalant.

Liam sighs, gripping the steering wheel. “Just told me to keep an eye on her. No promises. There’s not much anyone can do but wait.”

Zayn eyes him sympathetically and strokes his hand where it rests on the stick. “It’ll be fine.”

His words stand starkly against the hot midday silence. Finally, Liam breaks it, starting the engine at the same time that he gives a derisive chuckle.

“Said he doesn’t know why I’m going to so much trouble for an old nag.”

Zayn hmphs, casts a scornful gaze at the clinic as they pull away. “He’s not even technically a vet. Besides, there are some things a degree doesn’t teach you.”

“He’s a good man. Busy.”

“I’ll never forget the time he prescribed me those horrible pills.”

“You weren’t going to leave until he gave you something. I was there with you, Zayn.”

“Well, it should’ve been something that would stop the pain, not made it worse.”

“He was in over his head.” Liam chuckles darkly. “Don’t think they teach you about banshee headaches at medical school. We didn’t even know what was going on at that point.”

“She was fun, wasn’t she?”

Liam swears quietly, shaking his head. “I couldn’t go in that damn attic for weeks after that.”

They’re driving down the long, straight road that leads to their cottage. It’s only a few minutes from town, but it feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere - which, Zayn thinks, is honestly a description that could be applied to the entire town of Calico Ridge. Three hundred people, a general store, a clinic, a tiny cinema, two bars, a diner, and the farm supply. It wasn’t much, but it was quiet and filled with good people.

And, Zayn thinks as he watches the silvery green of the trees flash by, still thumbing over Liam’s hand, he wouldn’t trade this place for the world. He’s in love - not just with Liam, not just with the town, but with the place. Something about the soil is sacred. Something in the air is just right for him, and even when it seems like nothing is turning up his way, he can always sit below a tree and listen to the breeze and the birds and become whole again.

Liam's rubbing his hand back. "I'm sorry I snapped at you back there, angel," he murmurs, using the pet name he only does when he really wants to get on Zayn's good side. "I've got a lot on my mind."

"S'okay," Zayn replies. "Can we take a dip when we get home? I'll bet the swimming hole's not too chilly, after the sun today."

"Good idea," Liam says. "I've been meaning to let June Star in on a warmer day. It does her bones good."

So they strip down to their underwear and Liam takes the old grey mare out of the meadow, not even needing a halter as she follows wherever he goes. They slip into the shallows of the pond, June Star apprehensive at first but then lounging into the deeper water. It takes the weight off her bones, just like Liam said it would. They swim around together for a bit, but Zayn finds Liam's lips soon enough and they kiss in the middle of the pond, where Zayn's feet don't touch and Liam's just barely do. June Star paddles wide lazy circles around them, as if she's wondering why they aren't swimming too.

**  
  
**

The first glimpses of stars are beginning to twinkle in the dusky sky, and Zayn leans back to float and think about how he'd first met Liam. He'd been passing through Arkansas, trying to road trip his way to enlightenment. He supposes he found some scrap of it in the form of a twenty something eyeing him from a bar stool in a tavern on the main drag of the smallest town Zayn had ever been in. They had slept together that night, but Zayn drove on quickly the next morning. He'd always had a bad habit of running from things he didn't understand.

Zayn came back, though. He found Liam in the only other bar in town about six months later, after he realized that the man was more than a throwaway memory. Just a few weeks later, Liam had taught him to swim in the very pool they were floating in now.

Zayn was an outsider at first, being the only new thing to come to Calico Ridge since the gaslights had been replaced with bulbs. But as the months wore on, he became an accepted part of the town's mythos, just as everyday as old John Geoghegan's hound dog trotting to the post office each morning to fetch his owner's mail.

Zayn doesn't quite remember when he'd been introduced to Liam's particular set of talents. It wasn't the kind of thing that he'd been told all at once during some kind of dire late night confrontation. Rather, he'd caught on slowly to the way that Liam commanded a certain, subtle authority in town. He noticed the bags of salt, the iron bars and strange bundles of herbs scattered around Liam's house. Eventually he began accompanying Liam on his mysterious visits to homesteads around town. Given the veiled, vaguely uncanny aura of Calico Ridge itself, it was almost something that Zayn had expected. Of course, it was still quite a lot for him to process, and he'd had to place plenty of trust with Liam during what he now figures was the critical period in both their relationship together and in Zayn's acceptance of Liam's odd profession.

Liam appears in Zayn's peripheral vision. "We better get Junie toweled," he says. "Don't want to turn her out wet for the night."

Zayn stands up, having floated to a shallower spot, and pushes wet hair out of his face. He kisses Liam slowly, keeping his eyes open so he can watch the glint of the stars on the water over Liam's shoulder. June Star snorts from the shore a moment later, and they break apart, grinning. It's moments like these that Zayn still feels as if they'd met yesterday.

*

"Shouldn't someone be dealing with those ripe plums?" Liam asks as he comes into the living room the next afternoon.

"My back hurts," Zayn whines from the couch, where he's laying face down.

Liam approaches him and presses his fingers into the left side of Zayn's lower back where he's had trouble before. "Here?"

Zayn nods, sighing when Liam begins massaging the area. He hums contentedly when Liam’s big hands move further up his back, scratching gently between his shoulder blades and caressing the nape of his neck.

“Don’t you think the plums can wait?” he asks.

Liam  bends to kiss his neck, lips trailing to his ear. “If you want the crows to get at any more of them.”

“Mmm.” Zayn leans into his touch. “We harass the crows an awful lot. Maybe they deserve a break.”

“You think?”

"Mhm. Come here."

Liam pecks him on the cheek chastely. "I've got too many things that need doing. Sorry, love."

Zayn's eyes narrow, and he sits up. Liam just smiles sheepishly and goes out of the room rubbing the back of his neck. Zayn hears the door to the back yard thwack a moment later and he exhales in frustration.

He knows somewhere that it's healthy for their relationship that Liam knows how to resist him. Zayn had gotten bored with several lovers in the past after finding out that mindless devotion wasn't necessarily ideal. Still, Liam will pay for that one later. Zayn can play the same game just as well, and he's not above reducing Liam to begging just to get back at him.

He must fall asleep at some point, because the next thing he knows, the light falling through the curtains is significantly dimmer, and someone’s hammering on his front door. Liam is nowhere to be seen, so Zayn gets up, cursing at the returned twinge in his back.

He opens the door, leans on the threshold, and puts a cigarette between his lips slowly.

“The everlovin’ hell are you here for?” he growls, looking at the kid standing on his doorstep with hard eyes. He knows the freckles and sloppy crew cut only from an insult thrown at him and Liam from a car window nearly a year ago. Surprisingly, it’d been one of the only instances of homophobia he can remember experiencing in the little town. But Zayn doesn’t forget easily.

“I heard tell that you might help with something.” The kid’s voice is hushed and thin with apprehension, and it’s only then that Zayn notices the ashen tone to his face, the dark band of sweat staining the collar of his shirt. His voice drops even lower. “Unnatural things.”

Zayn lights his cigarette slowly, not taking his eyes from the kid. Thomas, he thinks his name is. Thomas Trimble. “Keep talking.”

His dark eyes dart nervously. “Sheep gettin’ killed. Odd ways, their throats torn out but nothin’ on them ate. This morning we found our dog. Same thing, only he was on the doorstep. That ain’t right. Ain’t normal.” He swallows. “We need help.”

“You walk here?” Zayn asks, knowing that Thomas isn't any close neighbor.

He finally meets Zayn’s eyes. “It slashed our tires.”

Zayn nods, up and down once. “You wait here a minute.”

“The cry it makes,” the kid says just as Zayn is stepping through the front door. “Fuckin’ horrible. Like twisting metal. Only at night.” His tone is desperate. Zayn pauses for a moment, then continues into the house.

Liam is peeling potatoes in the kitchen. “Visitor?”

“Yeah, this kid’s family’s got something after their livestock. My money’s on a stray hellhound. He says something slashed his tires, but I doubt it had anything to do with whatever’s eating his sheep. He’s a little shook up.”

Liam stands up, brushing his pants off. “Let’s go take a look.”

*

“Everything’s been so hard - first Anna’s passing and now this,” the tired woman sitting in her faded sitting room murmurs, grey eyes lighting on the photograph of a young girl on the mantelpiece.

"We'll get it taken care of, Mrs. Trimble," Liam says reassuringly. "If you don't mind, we'll set up camp in the cattle barn for the night."

"Of course. Whatever you need," she says sadly.

Mr. Trimble and Thomas don't say a word, but their steely eyes follow Zayn and Liam all the way out the back door.

*

"Hell of a family," Liam comments as they trudge through the dewy grass on the way to the livestock barn.

Zayn snorts. "You recognize the kid? He's the one who shouted at us from his truck last summer. Nasty little fuck."

The barn is dimly lit and cavernous. A few sheep bleat nervously as they enter. What’s left of the herd is huddled in one corner of their night paddock. The rest of the barn is empty save for  a few bales of musty hay and the row of stalls on the opposite wall. A red horse peers at them over the door of one, but the rest seem vacant.

Liam goes about his routine, nailing bundles of herbs in spots around the barn and saying a few words at the entrance. Zayn sits down on a bale of hay. He can’t seem to shake an odd feeling, and the shadowy interior of the barn isn’t doing much to help. “Liam, do you smell that?” he calls. He’s used to the regular scents of animal and manure that go along with livestock quarters, but there’s an undercurrent of something sharp and corrupt underneath it.

Liam pauses, looking up. “Smell what? All I smell is sheep shit.”

Zayn shakes his head and gets up, unable to sit still. He wanders over to the horse. Its eyes are rimmed in white, and as Zayn moves closer he can see the light sheen of sweat covering it.

“What’s wrong?” he says softly, putting a hand to the side of its damp neck to try and calm it down. The smell is more pervasive over here, and Zayn wonders if there’s a dead rat or something rotting in the rafters. Then he happens to glance into the next stall over.

“Liam!” he calls, trying to keep the panic from seeping into his tone.

Liam hurries over, putting a hand over his nose as he gazes into the stall. What had at one point been a mule stares back at them, eye glazed open and unseeing. Its throat is torn out, just as Thomas had described. But even more unsettlingly, letters are marked into its coat - not scratched or drawn, but sloppily burned. Zayn finally matches the terrible smell to the burnt flesh and hair across the mule’s body.

“Get out,” Liam reads softly.

Zayn turns away in silence as Liam remains standing there, staring. He slides the door to the horse’s box open, and it gladly lets itself be lead to the stall furthest from the corpse. When he returns, Liam is still motionless, jaw tense.

"Liam, we've dealt with hellhounds before and that's not what this fucking thing is," Zayn says, voice verging on panic. "It's too smart. It seems...human."

Liam begins to pace slowly and sits down suddenly on a hay bale, falling silent.

“What is it?” Zayn asks, stomach turning. The sensation that they’re in for much more than they bargained for rises in his throat.

“Anna,” Liam’s saying, still turning it over in his mind. “She’s buried out back.”

“What?” Zayn’s trying to put together what Liam is saying. “What are you thinking?”

Liam holds his gaze for a moment. “The little girl. She died around the same time the attacks started. We need to talk to her mother.”

Zayn nods, understanding.

*

“This may sound like a strange question, Ms. Trimble, but we wouldn’t ask unless we needed to know,” Liam says, tone gentle. Zayn just watches - Liam has always been a lot better at this part. “What happened to your daughter?”

Ms. Trimble starts, surprised, but she sets her lips and shakes her head. “She was always wandering off,” she says after a moment. “The creek was higher and stronger than it had ever been this spring. I suppose she thought she could cross it. We found her body wedged in a fallen branch some way downstream."

Her tone is stiff and impersonal, but Zayn gets the distinct feeling that she hasn't mourned the loss of her daughter as profoundly as a mother should. He chides himself, knowing that every person works a different way, but he can't shake the discomfort.

Liam nods silently, and meets Zayn’s eyes. “We know what we’re dealing with, Ms. Trimble. Thank you. We’ll be out in the barn. All of you need to stay inside the house tonight. Lock your doors.”

Mrs. Trimble turns away, lifting a handkerchief to her eyes. The grief Zayn can see in the angles of her expression make him wonder just how much she might know about what's actually happening.

"I'll go back to the barn and start setting things up," Zayn tells Liam. "You get what we need from the truck."

Liam nods after only a moment's hesitation, giving Zayn's side an affectionate squeeze as they part ways. He's gotten better at letting Zayn take initiative lately, beginning to trust his instincts and intuition more. Though Zayn may not have been doing this as long as Liam, he's a quick learner and a cunning thinker.

Liam's about to round the corner back into the barn when something catches his shirt collar and pulls him against the shadowy exterior wall of the building. Zayn's hand claps over his mouth before he can yell in alarm.

"There's something in there," Zayn hisses.

Liam's eyes widen. "Her?" he mouths.

Zayn nods slowly, pupils blown with apprehension.

“Get behind me,” Liam mutters, handing him a plastic water bottle of holy water.

As they step into the doorway, Zayn sights the figure that he’d only gotten a quick glance of before ducking away. She’s standing against the opposite wall of the barn, back towards them. All Zayn can make out is her tangled, mousy hair and the long black burial dress she’s wearing. His heart is ready to leap out of his throat - he’ll admit it, he’s scared. This isn’t something he’s encountered before.

As they step forward cautiously Zayn can see the girl’s neck beginning to rotate, the side of her face becoming slowly visible. She doesn’t stop, though. With a horrible crackling noise, she twists her head at an inhuman angle, until they can see her face clearly. Her features haven’t been touched by rot yet, but her lips curve into a smile far too wide for any living thing. Pinpricks of blood bead on her chapped lips.

“Jesus fuck,” Liam swears quietly. He sounds small. Zayn doesn’t even trust himself to speak.

They stare for a moment, and then she speaks.

“My quarrel is not with you.” She speaks with the curt dignity of a child reciting scripture in Sunday school.

“You’ve been making trouble,” Liam states, voice somehow steady and clear.

Somehow, in no more than three steps, she’s standing a foot from them. Zayn flinches, but forces himself not to take a step back. _She’s just a little girl_ , he thinks desperately to himself.

Liam lifts his bottle menacingly. "Stay away."

Anna laughs, a horrible, grating sound. "Foolish. It won't hurt me." Her greyish fingers snatch the bottle from Liam's hands and she pours a measure over her head, giggling as rivulets drip down her face, leaving tracks in the dust smeared there. "Now leave. You can do nothing to stop me. It is not your matter to meddle in." She punctuates the last statement by crushing the plastic bottle in her hand and tossing it to the side.

Liam makes as though he is turning to leave, but in the blink of an eye he produces an iron bar, which he presses to Anna's neck, backing her against the wall again. She screeches in fury and pain, fingers gouging Liam's unyielding arms.

After a moment, Liam pulls the bar back. Zayn can see angry red blisters where the iron had made contact with Anna's skin. She lets out a wail of frustration, shifting from foot to foot but unable to pass.

"Now will you speak with me?" Liam says.

Her snarl is unintelligible, but Liam goes on anyway.

"You have to leave your bodily form, Anna." She just stares, silently and hatefully. He brandishes the bar again.

Anna's mouth opens wide, but instead of words, she begins to scream, deafening and constant. Suddenly, Zayn understands exactly what Thomas had said about the sound of twisting metal. He grits his teeth against the unbearable noise, but it only pervades each of his senses.

"Anna!" Liam bellows. Though he's hardly audible over her scream, she stops suddenly, mouth contorting wordlessly as tears begin to flow from her eyes at an inhuman rate.

Startled, Liam’s hold on the iron bar loosens ever so slightly, and she takes the opportunity to lunge forward and sink her teeth into the softest part of his neck. He yells in pain, fingernails scrabbling at her neck fruitlessly until Zayn is able to pull her off.

"Fuck," Liam breathes, bringing a shaky hand to his neck to assess the damage. She'd missed any major veins, thankfully, but he's still bleeding. Zayn nods at the dirty flannel laying on the ground from where he's kneeling on Anna's chest, and Liam presses it to the wound.

"All right?" Zayn asks him, voice hoarse. Liam is usually very good at not getting himself hurt, so Zayn isn't accustomed to seeing it happen.

"I'm fine," Liam replies, but he sounds shaken.

 

Anna giggles from the ground, and Zayn glares at her with dark eyes. "The iron," he says tersely, and Liam hands him the bottle without hesitation.

“No,” she growls as soon as she sights it.

“Listen to me, and I won’t use it,” Zayn says curtly. She falls silent, eyes calculating. “What happened, Anna?” Zayn says, voice steady. “What did they do to you?”

Her neck contorts some more, face growing impossibly more twisted. “Never good enough," she hisses. "Never pure enough."

"Did they hurt you?"

An unholy screech rips its way from her throat. "Beaten," she says. "Slapped."

"Listen to me, Anna," Zayn says firmly. "You need to leave them alone. It's your time to rest, now. They can never hurt you again."

"It's not fair, it's not fair," she chants, "not fair, NOT FAIR, NOT-"

"You've done your time, Anna," Zayn whispers, meeting her bloodshot eyes. "Stop letting them hurt you."

Somehow, Zayn’s soft tone causes her to fall silent again, eyes locking with him and gentling somewhat. He can't look away, even when he hears Liam rustling frantically through their things behind him. Suddenly, Anna's body feels charged with energy again, and Zayn redoubles his efforts to pin her, thinking she's trying to escape. Then he realizes that the movement isn't of her own volition - that she's being lifted, invisibly. He clambers away from her, but even after they've broken eye contact she continues to float, levitating a good foot off the ground now. Zayn stops gaping long enough to glance over at Liam, who's reading as quickly as he can from his big leather bound book, mouth moving furiously over words foreign to Zayn's ears.

Zayn couldn’t say whether the process lasted ten seconds or ten minutes, but as soon as Liam ends the incantation, Anna stays suspended for a split second before falling to the ground with a thud into an unceremonious pile.

They approach the body cautiously, Zayn still brandishing his useless holy water. It doesn’t stir, laying still with an aura of finality.

"You did it," Liam tells him softly as they gaze down at the peaceful corpse. "I felt it. You broke her concentration, got past her hate and fear to the vulnerable soul inside. It gave me the opportunity to work the spell."

"I felt sorry for her," Zayn replies somberly. "Stuck here." The girl laying on the ground seems small and utterly fragile now.

They carry the body back to the grave. The soft earth isn't difficult to dig away, and they find the shattered remains of her wooden coffin soon enough. After arranging her in the debris, Liam places a wreath of ivy and clove over her heart.

"So she'll stay put this time," he says.

*

They debrief the Trimbles in the best way they can, making up some tale about a mountain lion. The knowledge that they aren't getting the full story is heavy in the eyes of the entire family, but none of them press for the truth. Mr. Trimble hands Liam a wad of bills wordlessly, and they leave through the screened back door.

Zayn glances over at Liam, grimy and bloody with his head drooping in exhaustion. "I'll drive, love," he says softly. He doesn't really like being behind the wheel of the pickup, with its touchy accelerator and rattling hood, but Liam very obviously needs some rest. They usually take a recovery day after a job - sleeping and cuddling and exchanging massages and making love - but Zayn expects they'll need at least a week off this time.

 **  
**Sure enough, Liam's passed out within five minutes, the first rays of dawn hitting his face. The sun is rising as Zayn pulls onto the main road back to town, and the morning has never looked so beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this, I had a lot of fun writing it. Horror/supernatural/gothic stories aren't easy to come by in this fandom, which is a pity since those are my favorite literary genres. If you have comments or suggestions for improvement I would love to hear them.


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